Category: History Essay Examples
See our collection of history essay examples. These example essays are to help you understanding how to write a history essay. History is a fascinating puzzle with both personal and cultural significance. The past informs our lives, ideas, and expectations. Historians study the past to figure out what happened and how specific events and cultural developments affected individuals and societies. Also, see our list of history essay topics to find the one that interests you.
Qasim Amin was a noted Egyptian intellectual and advocate of reform in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. His father was a Turkish Ottoman official and landowner married to an Egyptian woman. Amin was educated in Cairo and at the School of Law and Administration. He was …
The Amritsar massacre (April 13, 1919) helped many moderate Indian nationalists become fiercely antiBritish. The Rowlatt Acts, enacted by the British government, had outraged politically minded Indians. Extending wartime emergency legislation, the Rowlatt Acts gave the British viceroy in India the authority to silence the press, make arrests …
Since its beginnings in ancient Greece, one of the motivations driving Western philosophy has been the conviction that concepts such as “knowledge,” “mind,” “justice,” and “beauty” are obscure and that it is the business of philosophers to achieve a clearer understanding of their meanings. Analytic philosophy seeks this …
The Anglo-Japanese treaty was signed between Lord Lansdowne (1845–1927), the British foreign secretary, and Hayashi Tadasu (1850–1913), the minister of Japan, on January 30, 1902, in London to create an alliance scheduled to last five years. Its terms gave Japan an equal partnership with a great power of …
In 1923 Sun Yat-sen (d. 1925), leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party, then out of power, made an agreement with Adolf Joffe, Soviet representative in China. It became the basis of an entente between the KMT and the Russian Communist government whereby Russia sent advisers …
In October 1925 British, French, Belgian, and Italian representatives met in Locarno, Switzerland, to settle postwar territory claims in eastern Europe and normalize diplomatic relations with Weimar Germany. Germany also sought to establish guarantees protecting its western borders as established by the Treaty of Versailles that ended World …
After World War II Great Britain was no longer able economically, politically, or militarily to control Palestine. The Labour government was elected to power in 1945, and the new foreign minister, Ernest Bevin, attempted to placate mounting Arab opposition to a Jewish state by enforcing limitations on Jewish …
Arab nationalism emerged in the 19th century as the ruling Ottoman Empire continued its long decline. Arabs, who constituted the single largest ethnic group in the empire, were particularly resistant to the program adopted by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress stressing Turkish history, language, and ethnicity …
After the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II captured Constantinople on May 26, 1453, a new policy regarding minorities was initiated. The Ottomans organized each non-Muslim religious minority, mainly Christians and Jews, into a separate national administration, called a millet (pl. milletler). The head of each millet was its highest …
With new styles and the availability of new construction material, there was a dramatic change in architecture during the first half of the 20th century. Although prefabrication had first been used in London’s Crystal Palace in 1851, it did not become popular until the early 20th century, which …
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was one of the greatest reformers of the 20th century, and his legacy is present-day Turkey. He built a modern state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire through massive and progressive domestic reforms. Viewed with godlike status by Turks, he is considered the savior …
Aung San was born on February 13, 1915, at Natmauk in central Burma (Myanmar). Aung was the president of the student union at Rangoon University in 1938. He joined the left-leaning Dobam Asiayon (“We Burmese” Association) and was its general secretary between 1938 and 1948. Aung was also …
During the 1880s there were many attempts to establish a “federation” by which the six British colonies of Australia—New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia—would be able to come together under a single government. In 1890 it was finally agreed to call a convention …
The Balfour Declaration was a statement by the British government regarding Zionist aspirations for the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine. The statement took the form of a public letter from Lord Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary, to Lord Rothschild, a prominent British Zionist …
During 1912–13 the Balkan Peninsula witnessed two wars: the First Balkan War, which saw an alliance of Balkan states all but destroy the Ottoman presence in the region, and the Second Balkan War, fought between the former allies over the division of the spoils. The Balkan Wars were …
Prince Nguyen Vinh, later known as Emperor Bao Dai, was the son of Annamese emperor Khai Dinh. Born in Hue on October 22, 1913, Bao Dai was educated in France. He became emperor of Vietnam on November 6, 1925. On his ascension to the throne he took the …
Fulgencio Batista was born in Banes, located in the Oriente province of Cuba, on January 16, 1901, to a poor farming family. He received little formal schooling, although he attended night school, and joined the army in 1931, where he studied stenography. He was promoted to sergeant in …
José Batlle y Ordonez was the president of Uruguay from 1903 to 1907 and again from 1911 to 1915 and remains one of the great politicians in the history of Uruguay. He was a passionate believer in panAmericanism and introduced many social reforms that made Uruguay one of …
Born as David Josef Gruen in Plonsk, Russia, David Ben-Gurion studied the “Lovers of Zion” movement at a school established by his father. At an early age he met and greatly admired Theodore Herzl, the founder of the International Zionist Movement, who died when Ben-Gurion was 18. It …
Owing their origins to the yakuza, Japan’s native organized crime group, Japanese ultranationalist societies gained strength in the ex-samurai class during the reign of Emperor Meiji. The purpose of one such society, organized in 1901, was the expansion of Japanese control past the Amur River, the border between …
